I installed Linux on GT80 SLI

MSI GT80 SLI 6QE

I installed Fedora Linux on the 2280 M.2 SATA drive (Not on one of the PCIe/NVMe 2280s which are already used by Windows) or the 2.5" SATA that's used as a data drive. And Linux boots. The 4K screen is even more gorgeous with Linux than with Windows.

I chose Fedora because it seems closer to RHEL than Ubuntu or other distros.
FWIW, I first tried CentOS and it did not recognize any of the SSDs. Was not possible to install it.

I had a hard time configuring the Linux entry in the UEFI boot selection with bcdedit, like I did with Windows and will try to do so with Grub on the Linux end. There is a neat program called EasyBCD but it does not work well in the UEFI mode for Linux entries. In fact the Linux entry is grayed out when you try to create one. You cannot use the bcd command set or the EasyBCD app to add the Linux SSD to the UEFI boot choices in the NVRAM that pop up during the boot cycle.

But Linux boots if I hit F11 during the splash screen boot cycle. Hit F11, then select the Linux drive. That works.

MSI GT80 SLI 6QE model can have 3 bootable drives and all are 2280 format: M.2 PCIe number one, M.2 PCIe number two, and the third is M.2 SATA (non-PCIe) 2280.
The forth drive in the machine, the 2.5" SATA one, which used to be an HDD as it came from MSI and since upgraded to SSD, apparently cannot be a bootable device no matter what you do with any operating system.
I don't know if it's different on the original GT80 which was all non-PCIe, just SATA.

 

My GT73VR-RE came with just the 1TB HDD 2.5" and Windows was on it, so at least on my model, that port is bootable. However my machine is missing the second nvme pcie port. I moved Windows from the 2.5" hard drive to an nvme 2280 samsung 970 evo and now I boot from that. I haven't tried Linux yet on this machine, but in the past I was able to get EasyBCD to work with Mint and Ubuntu distros along with Windows just fine, but I put the machine in legacy mode and turned UEFI off.

 

I really don't want to change from UEFI to Legacy mode.

 

Strange, I thought Windows was supposed to be installed on the 2280 SSD with 1TB being used a data device, for storage. Not as a boot drive.

My GT80 came with a RAID0 of 2x256GB SSDs.

 

I ordered my machine with just the 1tb hard drive. I got a better deal on the 2280 Evo from Newegg on Black Friday than what XoticPC was offering for the same drive upgrade, so I just got them separate and did the switch myself.

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I understand. First thing I did when I got GT80 was to undo the RAID and remove the 2x256GB Toshiba SSDs and upgraded first to larger 512GB and then to dual 1TB PCIe 2280s.

I really prefer reliability over RAID.